A theme! A theme! My kingdom for a theme!

[ohmyjapan16]

I ended up here without having read a page from a Redwall series book. I still like a historical theme, but perhaps make it more modern like WWII.

[Ruddertail]

Look at all the folks that play Civilization, Age of Empires, Stronghold.

you can out that down to the pretty graphics and storyline

Not sure what you mean by storyline, I've only played Civ. As far as Civ, though, I'd say that Civ is attractive because it's actual historical progression, not just a historical theme. If we had a sort of multiplayer, online Civ, that might work. But that would involve a whole different game play.

if we could work a rpg type story into the tutorial it would work wonders, i think. perhaps a tutorial server with enemies all set up exactly so that we can lead them through turn by turn to see the basics?

Not a server, persay, but a separate tutorial program with auto accounts... Might work. I think this is actually quite conducive to role playing stuff, as that's essentially what people do - they become the ruler of a kingdom, competing against others to become the largest, the most powerful, the most influential.

I propose we actually LOOK at other proms that are doing well and see what they have in common.

Case study #1: Fire Emblem Empires
Location: http://www.fireemblemworld.com/feempires/promisance.php?action=login
Status: Poor Code, No Active Admins/Coders
Number of Active Players Now: ~ 50
Number of Active Players at peak: (est) 100 + With admins checking for multies. Reached 400 actives at one point, but no admins were checking for multies at that time.
Bio: Created in May of 2006 in conjunction with a Fire Emblem Fan site, FEE quickly soared in player numbers, reaching 100 + active players, despite a poor code. After the admin and coder, Reaver (Karlin the Warrior) became inactive, player levels reached 400. The game continues to exist to this day, despite the fact that both it and its accompanying fan site have been completely abandoned by the creator.
Reason for success? Affiliation with Fan Site, popular theme.

Case Study #2: 40k Classic
Location: http://www.promisance.40kterra.com/promisance.php?action=login
Status: QM Basic Code, Active Admin/Coder
Number of Active Players Now: 46
Number of Active Players at Peak: 46 (Currently at peak)
Bio: Created January 2008, for a Warhammer 40k Fan Site, 40k Classic quickly soared to 46 players. It has existed for only a few days, and has not been advertised on other Warhammer Fan sites.

Common to both? Affiliation with a fan site for a popular game - Fire Emblem video games in one case, Warhammer (I believe it's a board game) in another.

Application to FAF: While we don't have a fan site for any popular game or phenomenon, if we were to be able to advertise at/affiliate with such, we might be able to draw on much the same effect.

I ended up here without having read a page from a Redwall series book.

True. On the other hand, I came to Warbands II (Later FAF) through a Redwall Fan site linked to another Redwall fan site.

WWII might not be bad. I'd personally prefer pre- WWI, but that's just me.

[Fresh Water Fighters]

Rudder - Perhaps political satire. NO WAY. That would make it only American or whatever country you chose. Of the list you mentioned I know only 2 people.

But that got me thinking, A world thing might work. Having China, USA, Russia and other places, Kinda of like Command and Conquer theme. But that would not really attract new players very well.

LoTR is too widely used, We would never get ranked on Google. (Well not high)
The Wheel of Time is a good series. A very good read, and there seems to be a big online fan base.

Medieval / WWI / Roman could work, but might not.

Before anyone says Harry Potter I say NO.

Original Idea form me for the year: THE OS WARS! LINUX vs. MAC vs. windows
But still that does not attract new players. O well, thats was my idea of the year...

Because our game started as a part of a fan site and other games have too A thought would be to take a theme and then find fan sites for that theme and affiliate with them, Would be a way to get players if it worked.

Thats all i can think of right now.

[avatar of vengeance]

Wheel of time! It will definatly let rhandland play again!

[The Beatles]

Then let's make it that. (No idea what the series is, but I've heard of it before.) Someone make the theme, then we advertise on all the massive sites. We can put it up as frostnflame.org/wot/, and link to the main FAF with the historical theme. We can also make a Harry Potter version at /hp, a LOTR/Classic version at /lotr, etc. And link to the main one from all of them. How does that sound?

[avatar of vengeance]

Hmm, isn't that a bit too much work?
I think we'd better just do wheel of time.

[Freenhult]

Hahahaha. Thats insane Beatles.

No. FWF had some good imput. Thanks for that.

Warcraft anyone? That... That might be epic win for us.

[Gen. Volkov]

What's the problem with this theme? Cause I don't think that's the issue. ME had the same theme and did very well. Of course, since I am co-creator of the current theme, I am a little biased about it. But I really don't think the theme is the issue here.

I could quite easily standardize the unit names if that's an issue though. That was just done to add flavor to the different races.

I like Beatles idea of setting up different FAFs with different themes. I really don't want to change the historical theme here.

As for another period of history, well, it would be kind of hard to set up a Roman or Alex the Great theme, because there'd be one race that pwned everyone. However, pre-WW1, WW1, pre-WW2, and WW2 are all possibilities for a different theme with balanced races.

Warcraft? Wow, um, we'd get some SERIOUS activity from the GIGANTIC WoW playerbase. Dunno if they would stick around though.

[prog frog]

I have played maybe 5 different promis and aside from FEE none of them had a very particular theme. From my experiences Valhall uses a simple fantasy theme and doesn't have any obvious connections except other promisance sites. Most of the others were very similar. So maybe it isn't the theme, it seems to me that it could be the smaller numbers (of people playing and of resources and troops) or the lack of an easy way to get started.

[FireFrenzy]

Unless/Until a more preferable theme is found, I agree with Beatles and Volkov in setting-up alternative themes while also maintaining the current one.

Regarding suggestions: While I'm not an avid reader of the stories myself, I do think that a 'Harry Potter' theme would garner a reasonable fan-base. In general, though, my input would be to focus on a more general, overarching theme with a range of offerings. If anyone has ever played the Heroes of Might and Magic games, then they'll know what I mean when I suggest a general fantasy theme: perhaps have a race related to 'Harry Potter'; a race related to 'Lord of the Rings'; a race related to 'The Wheel of Time'. An eclectic variety of offerings would likely comform with a larger range of interests while still catering to individuals' particular preferences.

Personally, though, I've always been a futurist when it comes to themes.

[Shadow I]

Unless/Until a more preferable theme is found, I agree with Beatles and Volkov in setting-up alternative themes while also maintaining the current one.

Regarding suggestions: While I'm not an avid reader of the stories myself, I do think that a 'Harry Potter' theme would garner a reasonable fan-base. In general, though, my input would be to focus on a more general, overarching theme with a range of offerings. If anyone has ever played the Heroes of Might and Magic games, then they'll know what I mean when I suggest a general fantasy theme: perhaps have a race related to 'Harry Potter'; a race related to 'Lord of the Rings'; a race related to 'The Wheel of Time'. An eclectic variety of offerings would likely comform with a larger range of interests while still catering to individuals' particular preferences.

Personally, though, I've always been a futurist when it comes to themes.

most fantasy worlds dont mix. i dont think a mélange of themes will get anywhere

[Ruddertail]

Beatles - The problem with that is that the main FAF is still the historical theme. If nobody is interested in historical theme, they'll all stay at the other versions. We'll have divided player base, to some degree. Plus, it may look a bit odd, like we're just spamming themes trying to get members, which may discourage people from wanting to play.

Volkov - the only problem I see with the Historical theme is that it doesn't seem to attract people. RWL, FEE, 40k - all of them grew big because they were tied into a popular thing with an existing online community. Valhall wasn't, it's true. But Valhall never got as big, and I think it's mostly collected people from other promies, LO for example.

Still, I'm willing to stay with the historical theme for a while. Let's redesign the main page, get a newbie guide/tutorial in, then get some advertising up - YouTube vid, maybe MySpace/Facebook, other sites (maybe some Civ related ones?) and see what happens. If we still can't attract new people, then we'll revisit the theme idea.


FireFrenzy - what do you mean, a "Futurist"? You prefer a theme based in the future, kind of Sci Fi? Or you want to come up with your own theme?

[avatar of vengeance]

The best themes until now are:
1. Lotr
2. wheel of time
3. advance wars
4. warcraft

But of course if we do one of these themes, we need to change the looks of the game too like FEE.

EDIT: And why it have to look different? because you can get more feeling of the game. If I play FEE I have allot more feeling in the game than if I play valhall.

[bjornredtail]

I really don't think the theme is the problem here... Instead we should look at our gameplay and perhaps overall design first. Remember that we are competing against more than simple Prominences, but video games in general. The overall lack of strategic depth in our economic system I believe is much more of a problem than a historical theme. I think this chould be changed, even at the cost of our old Prominence "market"...

I should also point out that unless the book/movie series is old enough (anything before 1923 is safe here in the US, provided that in the case of Trademark the mark is no longer used identify a product) using it for a theme might violate the author's and publisher's copyrights (derivative works) and trademarks (name and the like).

[Gen. Volkov]

Volkov - the only problem I see with the Historical theme is that it doesn't seem to attract people. RWL, FEE, 40k - all of them grew big because they were tied into a popular thing with an existing online community. Valhall wasn't, it's true. But Valhall never got as big, and I think it's mostly collected people from other promies, LO for example.

Well, as I pointed out that ME had a large playerbase, and they had a similar theme to ours. QMT was very big at it's peak, and it didn't have a popular theme. So I don't think our theme is the issue. It has to be gameplay or something else.

Still, I'm willing to stay with the historical theme for a while. Let's redesign the main page, get a newbie guide/tutorial in, then get some advertising up - YouTube vid, maybe MySpace/Facebook, other sites (maybe some Civ related ones?) and see what happens. If we still can't attract new people, then we'll revisit the theme idea.

That sounds fine to me.

Beatles - The problem with that is that the main FAF is still the historical theme. If nobody is interested in historical theme, they'll all stay at the other versions. We'll have divided player base, to some degree. Plus, it may look a bit odd, like we're just spamming themes trying to get members, which may discourage people from wanting to play.

I don't think an increase in general site activity is going to hurt us. Maybe we'll end up with a divided playerbase, maybe not, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that an increase in activity in one area is going to lead to at least something of an increase at the main site. Especially if we stick up links to it in the alt site.